Improper interference

“YOU CANNOT fire somebody and not say what the cause is,” the Prime Minister said on Tuesday as he sought to clear the air – two years after the fact – over his dismissal of Darryl Smith as Minister of Sport in 2018.

Yet is this not precisely what Dr Rowley has done by keeping his reason for sacking Mr Smith secret up until now?

Ministers serve at a prime minister’s pleasure and it seems this has led the current officeholder to take the position that he has no obligation to tell anyone why he fired a minister. That view may well follow the letter of the law, but it nonetheless violates a forward-thinking sense of democracy.

Furthermore, the story offered now raises more questions than answers.

According to the PM, the overreach that got Mr Smith in hot water had nothing to do with sexual harassment, cover-ups, legal action, non-disclosure agreements or abuse of office in relation to a female staff member. Rather, it was a clerical matter.

“I fired Darryl Smith for interfering improperly in the public service,” Dr Rowley said. To wit, a permanent secretary (PS) had been asked by Mr Smith to take out the cause from a dismissal letter.

Chafing at the cost of this in the long run, the PM added, “The minute the PS did that they exposed the taxpayer.”

This was the only exposure that merited action.

But what explains the PM’s belated statement now? Put another way: will his failure to speak out, even given the complex legal issues involved, not draw suspicion?

And what are we to make of the findings of an investigatory committee which apparently saw the ministerial conduct referred to by the PM in a more sinister light?

In a letter of adverse findings addressed to Smith in August 2018, the committee wrote, “It appears to us that there was a concerted effort to sanitise the matter of any reference to the allegations of sexual harassment and to treat the matter as an orthodox claim of unfair dismissal.” Indeed.

Amid all of this, has the PM’s decision in 2018 to keep Mr Smith in Cabinet but then, hours later, to fire him, been satisfactorily explained?

Did it make sense to keep a report on this matter secret while finding cause to take action?

When the Opposition asked a question on legal expenditure in relation to this matter in Parliament in 2018, an indignant Dr Rowley said, “Sexual harassment in public office did not start with this government, so don’t come and play holier than thou with me.”

So what, now, are we to believe?